Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Write on ... with Write the Room Activities

When I first started teaching KG years back, I was told to have centres, one of them being "Write the Room". Here's how it worked back then: students grabbed a clipboard with a pencil tied to it (so they wouldn't lose it or spend time trying to find a pencil), a blank piece of paper and just wrote whatever words they could find around the room. There wasn't much direction and it really wasn't fun! That's when I new something had to be changed.

I have themes in my classroom which change every few weeks/month. For instance, the themes for September are Back to School and Apples. I decided to create a fun and engaging Write the Room Centre for my students. I came up with coloured picture cards with themed words on them and scattered those around the room (on my closet doors, on the cubbies, on the walls, etc.). Students had to find these words and record them. That's when I knew I needed a better recording system then just a blank paper. Themed write-the-room worksheets were created and asked students to do various things with the words they found. Some worksheets were the same theme to theme (I did change the icons on them) and I also added new worksheets specific to the themed words.

I love my Write the Room centre. Students do too! It is so much fun to discover the cute words! I have made numerous Write the Room packages which are on SALE at my Teachers pay Teachers store all of this week. Here are some of the other Write the Room packages I have: Apples, Fall, Outer Space, Down on the Farm, and Under the Sea. Come check them out!

Here is a freebie for you. Click on the picture to get your Back to School Write the Room sample.

Hi StayInK! Yes, there are 18 picture cards all together. I also have different recording sheets - a couple are the same in each package and the rest are really tailored to the theme of the package (i.e. in Back to School you have to look around your classroom and see if the words you found match the objects in the room, i.e. pencil). Thanks!Alessia